ARLINGTON — NCAA president Mark Emmert
portrayed the unionization of college athletes in almost apocalyptic terms
during a press conference Sunday at the Final Four.

“It would blow up everything about the collegiate model of athletics,” Emmert
said.

The preliminary National Labor Relations Board ruling allowing Northwestern
football players to form a labor union represents just one of several major
issues facing the NCAA.

Appearing on a podium with Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby and four key
university presidents, Emmert addressed everything from efforts to give five
power conferences more influence to legal challenges facing the
organization.

But the biggest impending issue was the threat of unionization, for now
limited to football at one private institution with several hurdles remaining.
Emmert called it “grossly inappropriate” at one point.

Asked how different the NCAA would be in five years, Emmert said that
“because of internal change it will, I certainly hope, be an association that
involves student-athletes that participate in their sports. The notion this is
all going to move toward unionized employees playing college sports is a
ridiculous idea. In many, many cases, they’ll just cease to exist.”

He said current Division I schools would simply move to a nonscholarship
Division III model rather than unionize.

The college establishment is taking the threat seriously.

Bowlsby dismissed a reporter’s question about union “saber-rattling,” calling
the unionization efforts a legitimate process and noting that union advocates
were lobbying on Capitol Hill. At the same time, he sees it as a threat to the
NCAA’s current model.

“We’re not about establishing an employee-employer relationship with our
students,” Bowlsby said.

“It could have negative major implications to impose a collective bargaining
model — essentially a professional model — between relations students and
universities,” Scott said. “It could be very detrimental to a lot of
student-athletes.”

The NCAA also faces other issues tearing at its fabric.

In an opening statement that almost made him sound like NCAA
president-in-waiting, Bowlsby talked about examining what’s involved in an
athletic scholarship, concussions and safety as well as education as a
mission.

Emmert expressed optimism that proposals to give power conference members
more autonomy within NCAA rules would pass. He suggested a vote could come in
August, after a spring and summer of debate.

While Bowlsby said he wants the NCAA to remain inclusive — nobody is talking
now about the five power conferences breaking away — the needs of the
power-conference programs are different than many of the other 350 Division I
members.

“We can’t be overly concerned about what challenges schools 275 to 350,”
Bowlsby said. “We have to try to do what we need to do with our schools.”

Kansas State president Kirk Schulz said the NCAA members face “a fork in the
road. What we’re going to put out there again is not perfect, but I believe that
the vast majority of members recognize that some of these things must change and
that we need to do it rapidly.”

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